Dealers from all across the country will be in Rosemont, Illinois for this week’s ANA World’s Fair of Money. In fact, many have been in town since Friday in anticipation of a great show and for the release of the Gold Proof Kennedy Half Dollar.

The U.S. Mint will release the 50th Anniversary 1964-2014 Kennedy Half Dollar Gold Proof on August 5th. The Mint will only release 2,500 coins over the length of the show and will be limited to one per customer. The rest of the coins will be sold through the Mint website. The pre-release publicity has attracted tremendous attention and the aftermarket is expected to be quite intense.

Not only is the ANA Show usually the biggest attraction of the year, they now have two major auctions to share with the numismatic community. Heritage Auctions and Stack’s Bowers Galleries will be the co-official auctioneers of this year’s event. Both sales have a tremendous array of rarities that should entice some very competitive bidding.

Heritage has some outstanding coins to choose from as potential highlights, including the 1793 Chain Cent AMERICA in PCGS MS64 Brown which has the CAC sticker and the 1795 $10 Gold 13 Leaves in PCGS MS65. But the star of the sale could well be the 1797 Norweb Half in MS65+ certified by PCGS. This coin is likely to break the million dollar barrier as several serious buyers are tracking this rarity. It also helps that this coin was approved by CAC.

The Stack’s Bowers Galleries Sale includes many known rarities like the 1795 Flowing Hair Dollar certified by NGC as a SP64 and a 1793 Wreath Cent in PCGS MS64 Brown with the CAC sticker. Though the coin that may interest the most bidders is the illustrious 1804 Draped Bust Dollar; this one is certified by NGC as PR55 and it is a Class III Restrike. Both of these sales are bound to set some records and we will be examining the results over the next few weeks.

In this week’s LD Wholesale Market Dealer Price Guide you will find a few increases within most of the charts but the market is currently defined by steady prices and demand is much improved. Better to rare date coins are at the top of most collectors’ lists while U.S. Gold and Silver Dollars remain high on want-lists as well.

One of the more interesting coins that climbed higher this past week is the 1840 O Seated Quarter with Drapery. In MS65 this coin increased to $19,500 Market. There are only two coins certified in this grade, both by PCGS. There are none grading higher and only 52 in all Mint State grades. The original mintage of this coin was just 43,000 but it is obvious that it is much rarer than the mintage indicates, especially in the uncirculated grades. In early 2008 this coin was priced at $15,500 Market. With only a 25% increase in six years, it looks like this coin has good potential to increase further when one of the two enters the market.